


White Rabbit

by MMXIII



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Childhood, Drugs, Introspection, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Sociopathy, Violence, mormor, pyschopathy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-06
Updated: 2014-03-24
Packaged: 2017-12-25 20:27:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/957283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MMXIII/pseuds/MMXIII
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You’re 11 years old, dirty feet and dirtier hair, breathing hard at the edge of the forest at the edge of the estate. You don’t hear your brother yelling in the background, indistinct though undeniably urgent, as you stare into the earthy void, drunk on adrenaline.</p><p>Curiosity kills all manner of creatures,</p><p>But not you</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sebastian

_You’re 11 years old, dirty feet and dirtier hair, breathing hard at the edge of the forest at the edge of the estate. You don’t hear your brother yelling in the background, indistinct though undeniably urgent, as you stare into the earthy void, drunk on adrenaline._

_Curiosity kills all manner of creatures,_

_But not you_

* * *

 

The war certainly doesn’t kill you, hell you rise right up to that fucking challenge like a dog on a chain.

For a while it’s glorious, and you forget who you are so much that other people begin to remember. The fastest, coldest, deadliest in the field, you shoot like a psychopath, dead-straight, pulse low as fuck.

 

You are, have always been, far too good at things that have limited household applications

Indeed you crash and proverbially burn in a blaze of splintered teeth and fractured skulls. But even with a tide mark of blood around your forearms and a dozen senior officers on your back nothing has ever quite satisfied.

The possibility that nothing ever will manifests in hauntingly void, silent dreamscapes that you claw your way out of.

 

You’ll throw yourself into anything – _resourceful, opportunistic, proactive_

You’ll throw yourself into anything – _unpredictable, reckless, out of control_

 

And at the end of the day you’re not in the mood to deny anything. _Yes_ , you _are_ completely out of your blood-soaked, sweat-stained, oxcytocin-dependent mind.

It’s all true.

All of it.

Though you might contest one assertion brought against your gilded family name; you don’t actually have a problem with authority _per se_.

 

* * *

 

_You’re 17, and indulging, rather uncharacteristically, in a spot of self-reflection._

_You’re bright, you know you are, exceptional problem-solving capabilities and all that crap. But you can’t, or rather you don’t, take instruction – only your mother ever really understood the difference. People don’t interest you, their preoccupations are trivial, their activities mundane._

_If you were honest, you’d say you didn’t know what to do. But you aren’t, you never will be, so you don’t._

_So you unconscientiously object to sodding Sunday lunch, and every other family activity, and spend the time climbing trees and skinning rabbits._

_You fucking love it._

 

* * *

When they eventually do ship you back from the service it’s a bit like getting _sent down_ all over again except this time there isn’t even a twinge of shame as you imagine your father’s face.

 

Fuck your father; he’s been dead for _years._

You’ve been disinherited for far longer than that.

 

And it’s only now that you begin to realise why you can’t see what everyone else sees. You’re a fucking nihilist. You just want to feel alive as you rot, probably a little faster than everyone else for all that excessive drinking and heavy smoking. It's not exactly boredom either, or disenchantment you muse, picturing your shitty flat in Shorditch, you never sit still for long enough. 

 

* * *

 

_You're 4 minutes old and they call you Sebastian, a family name, which will never cease to be ironic_

_A Biblical name too you'll notice, when you encounter the relevant material_

_You flourish in the wake of familial disinterest,_

_And all you'll ever really need is a knife_

 


	2. Jim

_You’re 4½, all elbows and knees and dark dark hair in greying, fraying 2 nd hand pyjamas that smell vaguely of oven chips and nicotine. The walls in your mother’s crumbling two-up-two-down are swollen with rising damp; it’s a dissenting empire of half-cast light, softly-stained ceilings and loose door frames._

_Each renewed waking is a symphony of colour, smoke and chaos_

_You are enraptured_

_For now_

 

* * *

 

For several glorious years you process new information at an exponential rate, filing it away in select corners of a grand, imagined house modelled on one from the cover of a torn waiting-room magazine. Your youth affords you a few more years of mileage in the form of the things it prevents you from fully understanding.

 

Everything, _everything_ is bright, deliciously volatile, aligning and realigning, calibrating and recalibrating feverishly; _themoreyouknowthemoreyouknowthemoreyouknow_

 

You spend those years so drunk on self-contained revelation that you can’t yet even _begin_ to imagine the blackness that maximum saturation will bring

 

 

* * *

 

_You’re 9½ years old and the manila file in your hands is crisp and heavy. It tastes cold & institutional under your little pink tongue as you sit, curled in the airing cupboard, clutching your prize. You hum a string of notes stolen from a kids tv show, giddy with anticipation; you aren’t supposed to have it and the neurotic delirium makes your fingers tingle._

_It seems to know everything about you; such omniscience fascinates you beyond articulation._

_Impassive cursive details your height as below average, your build scrawny, your problem-solving capabilities as inexplicably enhanced._

_Your behaviour it describes as withdrawn, erratic, compulsive,_

_Deranged_

_Unmanageable_

 

* * *

 

People become increasingly disinteresting, and, at times, excruciatingly tedious. They bleed all over their hilariously trivial problems, flailing ineffectually, like flies behind glass, in a feeble attempt to avoid rampant obscurity will consume them indiscriminately. 

How perfectly, concisely, irrevocably _boring_

 

Eventually you own one government for every pair of Italian shoes that compliment your chilling façade, a cartel for every car, a dozen arterial pipelines and a handful of princes & heirs. An empire, _your_ empire, rises out of the dust under your obscenely capable hands; its engineering is a delicate task, requiring a great deal of your not unsubstantial subtlety, tact  & boundless narcissism.

Its governance is positively _primal -_ It’s a crime really

 

You see order everywhere, nothing new; fucking patterns won’t leave you alone

So you tell people you’re the _King_ of Chaos

And they believe you

 

How _adorable,_ you think, as the blood runs down the walls

 

 

* * *

 

 

_You’re born in some shithole outside Dublin with fire in your blood and despair in your huge black eyes. A hound among rabbits._

_Your rages are spectacular, your disdain fatal._

_You are christened James,_

_But you will have so many other names_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks!


	3. William Sherlock

_You're 6 and your world is a palace of gunwales, capstans, bowsprits, keels, briggs, topsails_

~~[up-turned dining-room tables and precariously draped bedsheets]~~

 

_Your captaincy is undisputed; naturally you are very charming._

_And Mycroft is an excellent first mate, though he is never told._

 

_You let him tie your laces even though [you know he's known] you could do it yourself for weeks._

_You adore eachother._

 

* * *

 

 

You begin to see everything, enraptued by the plurality of the world, careening through isolated landscapes of curtain-rail dust, carpet fibre and tracked dirt. Mycroft mediates, unknowingly driving you further into your fantastic worlds, citing numerous excuses for your recurrent and increasingly defiant audaciy:

Youth

Curiosity

Under-stimulation

Boredom

Arrogance

Impertinence

_'...ostentatious disregard for the well being of others let alone yours-'_

 

Despite your best efforts, you will feel Mycroft's steady hand between your serrated shoulder blades, even as you spit and snarl through your twenties, and your thirties, lets be honest...

His the one hand that was never raised in anger.

 

* * *

 

 

_At 17, piracy is a faint memory of lake-side lemonade and beseiged staircases._

_You don't care, you think furiously, you don't, you don't, you musn't, as Mycroft leaves again, and again, and you conduct your school days in isolation._

 

_The chemisty labs provide one site of blessed refuge, from idocy, from tedium, from the ever creeping Baudelarean Ennui that will always haunt you; they become the foyer of what John will know as your 'Mind Palace'._

 

_But that comes later._

 

* * *

 

 

You're 20 and- oh god who CARES

[not you certainly]

 

This is the era of Mycroftian disaproval

He remembers it as the era of filament-white cocaine, and a recurrent, inscrutable burning sensation in his chest cavity.

His hair is no longer titian, nor his eyes warm.

 

* * *

 

 

_And then, and then_

_Your brain is whirring away with your consent,_

_and Lestrade is inexplicably patient_

_and Marthe Hudson dotes_

_and Molly is exceptionally accomodating_

_and Mycroft peripatetcally exhibits the nauseating symptoms of fraternal pride_

 

_and the work, oh the work is glorious_

_You would have given your life in her service_

 

_except there is John_

_John must stay_

 

* * *

 

You enter the world at an ungodly hour, howling, with discoloured blue eyes.

An incredibly fussy baby, soothed only by overwhelming sensory stimulation

~~[and Mycroft's French lullabies]~~

 

You will die once when you are 34, and again at 36.

 

Your dismissal of the world and its denizens condemns you

But you will be absolved.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Work in progress, mostly disparate ideas, but I gotta put 'em somewhere :)  
> Thanks for reading!


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